San Diego launches $350,000 social media push for #policerecruits

San Diego’s chronic struggle with police officer vacancies has prompted the city to pay $350,000 to an outside marketing firm for a new recruiting strategy focused on using social media to attract millennials.

The city, which has previously handled all Police Department marketing and recruiting in-house, hopes to better compete with other law enforcement agencies with a new image, slogan and strategy.

The move is the latest in a series of efforts to ease or even solve a chronic shortage of officers that has lengthened response times, limited proactive policing and ballooned overtime budgets.

The department’s 210 vacancies among 2,040 budgeted officer positions – a vacancy rate of more than 10 percent – could grow significantly worse with 520 officers eligible to retire in the next five years.

Since last fall, the city has given pay raises of at least 25 percent to officers and revamped recruiting policies, including devoting more staff to the process and making changes to the written exam and background checks.

Police officials said this week at a meeting of the City Council’s public safety committee that hiring an outside marketing firm will be another key step in the process.

"It's the job of our police officers to keep our neighborhoods safe,” said Councilwoman Barbara Bry of La Jolla. “It's not their job to market. That's what we need an outside expert for."

The city will pay Loma Media of downtown San Diego $350,000 over the next two years and possibly another $185,000 to $190,000 per year for three additional years.

Officials from Loma, which was selected over three other marketing firms that submitted proposals, said they plan to focus their campaign on videos that will be shown on social media sites like Facebook.

"All the statistics show that video is more effective than any other medium right now, especially with a digital strategy," said Loma’s Angelina Giovannini. “Short, quick stories that resonate in the timeframe that is appropriate."

Police Chief David Nisleit said such an approach will also help the city target specific kinds of recruits, potentially allowing it to make the pool of applicants more ethnically diverse.

"I want to hire officers that are very reflective of the communities that we serve," said Nisleit, suggesting a lack of diversity among recruits could prompt a shift in strategy at some point. "We can change courses if need be, or really personalize it to attract different groups."

Loma has previously handled marketing for the U. S. Navy Seals, University of California San Diego, the Semper Fi Fund, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the city of Austin, Texas.

The public safety committee on Wednesday unanimously approved the city’s contract with Loma, which will be forwarded to the full council for final approval in coming weeks.

The centerpiece of the city’s efforts to fill the vacant officer positions is a package of pay raises giving all officers cumulative hikes of at least 25.6 percent between this July and January 2020.

Veterans with more than 20 years on the job get larger raises, totaling 30.6 percent.

Officials said they expect the higher pay to increase the number of applicants, which was down 39 percent when calendar year 2017 is compared to calendar year 2014.

Meanwhile, the department has been making significant changes to the recruitment process for new officers, based partly on concerns that roughly 95 percent of applicants fail to become officers.

The written exam was revamped on Jan. 1 and the department shrunk the re-test waiting period from 90 days to 60 days.

Background checks, which typically take three to four months, have been streamlined with several changes, including a new approach to polygraph tests.

The department is also giving police written tests at military bases and boosting recruitment of people transitioning out of the military, a group that typically makes up about one-third of applicants for San Diego officer positions.

The department is also devoting more staff to the process, including $317,000 in the annual city budget approved last week for a police captain and other resources to accelerate background checks.